Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Rubyists are Wrong

There's something that's been bugging me for a long time that I need to get off my chest. Some of you may hate me for it, but perhaps there are others out there with the same complaint, silently in agony, wishing for death to take the pain away. It's time to set the record straight, and prove once and for all that the Rubyists are wrong.

Rubies are almost NEVER cut like this:


The cut shown here is what's called a "brilliant" cut (though it's not faceted enough...artistic license), or more specifically a "round brilliant". Brilliant is typically a diamond cut, and something like 75% of the world's diamonds are cut this way. The shape and angles of the facets are all mathematically designed to refract as much light as possible out the top of the diamond, resulting in the "brilliant" sparkling you see. This is possible because the most popular diamonds are CLEAR. Get it? It's clear so light passes through it. It's not RED. So it's cut in a way that takes advantage of it being CLEAR.


Rubies, on the other hand, are generally cut into ovals or "cushions" but also into some other cuts like "emeralds" (the most common cut for emeralds, in case it wasn't obvious), rectangles, or hearts (ugh). If they show an asterism (a "star" of four or six points due to the ruby's crystal structure) they're usually cut into cabochons, which are shaped but not faceted. Rubies are NOT typically cut into "brilliant" shapes.


See that one in the JRuby logo? That was a public-domain SVG graphic of a diamond that Tom Enebo colored red. A DIAMOND. Oh yeah, and we're wrong too. BTW, here's the Wikipedia article on ruby (the gemstone). Search for "brilliant". Yeah, I didn't think so.


Even the Ruby Association (of whose board Matz himself is chairman) has made the mistake of choosing this brilliant-shaped logo.


We can't really tell how the ruby in the RubyForge logo is cut, since it seems to just be a red hexagon. But I bet it's a hexagonal BRILLIANT cut again.


I don't even know what that is. It's like a brilliant cut with a dome on top of it. Maybe it was designed that way so you could fit "Ruby Inside" inside it. But it's definitely not something you're going to see in a jewelry store.


And there are lots more examples. Check your favorite Ruby project. If they have a ruby in the logo, it's probably a "brilliant" cut. And I think that proves once and for all that we Rubyists aren't as brilliant as we think.

Update: It turns out the Pythonistas are wrong too. Is there no sanity left in the world?

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

The thing is that this is a universal symbol for a ruby. We all know what it means. If you want to be technically correct why not show the crystal lattice for corundum or aluminum oxide. After all a ruby is nothing more than a corundum with a little bit of chromium in it to give its nice red color. Of course know one knows what the hell a rhombohedral crystal lattice is.

Karl von Laudermann said...

You lost the argument as soon as you said that rubies are "almost" never cut like that. :-)

Also, for photographic evidence, go to this page and search for the word "diamond".

Anonymous said...

Best baiting blog title I've seen in a long time. ;-)

Also, as the creator of the RubyForge logo, let me set the record straight: it's just a shiny, pretty red hexagon. No brilliant-cut faux pas intended, I promise.

Anonymous said...

Let me say first of all I find it kind of gay that you even know the names of the gem cuts. Second, I believe that you can cut a ruby however you like, who the hell cares if it is typical or not.

Unknown said...

justin mullins:

Let me tell you that the fact that you do not know brilliant cuts is a sure sign that you never had a girlfriend ;)

Joe Grossberg said...

Meticulously pedantic.

Anonymous said...

Man, cut it out! (pun sorta intended) It is kinda funny in a sorta lame way you can get bugged by this. But I guess we all geeks kinda have our funny pet peeves. Besides that there is prove already in the comments of rubies cut like that I must say that even if it was a ruby in the shape of a diamond it would still make sense to me since Ruby borrows so much from other languages. In any case, leave it be! It's so preeety! ;-)

Evan said...

Vagif FTW

James Britt said...

I designed the ruby-doc logo because I saw a way to merge the gem-shape with with the near-universal menu icon for "document".

Not a proper ruby shape?

Too bad! I think it's clever, so it wins.

:)

Actually, I had noticed that most Ruby logos used the diamond style cut, but when designing my logo I figured I should use a shape that, for better or worse, had acquired some iconic meaning to Rubyists.

Observer that we are hackers, not gem cutters.

Anonymous said...

amnit man, another great entry - i never thought about this!

But now that you mentioned this... are pearls ever cut?

Kit Plummer said...

Hmmn? Don't you peeps have something better to be doing?

I kinda like the O'Reilly approach...ignore logos...assign meaningless critters.

Anonymous said...

Don't have anything better to do?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

eh, you're just grumpy because your java got cold and bitter before you could drink it all.

Dysmas said...

But isn't the language really called after a certain lady whose name one Ricky Wilson likes to repeat...?

Col Wilson said...

Seriously, get some sleep.

Anonymous said...

My fiance has a diamond-cut ruby ring from his grandmother.

And Ruby brought us together.

Guess it was fate.

Anonymous said...

The headline got me here because I thought someone was finally going to put into concise words why USING Ruby is wrong.

How disappointing.

Who really cares about the logo? lol

Peter Cooper said...

Charles: I care. I'm really sorry the philistines above don't, but I do. As such, the Ruby Inside logo is now redesigned. It's not exactly a Ruby but I'm on your side here.

JeanHuguesRobert said...

Truth is Ruby is a diamond!

Anonymous said...

Funny... you got me! I thought you were actually going to talk about the Ruby language. Nice, well laid out post though.

Anonymous said...

You do know that the word 'ruby' also refers to a color.

Anonymous said...

Ha, ha, ha, nice honey pot post :-D Anyway rubyst are not that wrong, I haven't ever seen a Camel shaped Perl, and lets not start talking a bout Duke ;-)

Paul W. Homer said...

Yep. It is truly fascinating how many things in our lives are based on incorrect 'knowledge'. It may not seem significant, but this stuff peculates up, and occasionally rears its head in the strangest of all places. You have to ask yourself: how much of what I 'know' is really correct? If you knew, you'd be surprised I think :-)

Unknown said...

The favicon at ruby-lang.org is oval, perhaps a star ruby.

Anonymous said...

You're willing to excuse the number of facets as "artistic license", but you obsess over the cut that the artist chose? It may not be the most common cut for a ruby, but it's a distinctive shape which clearly communicates "this object is a gemstone".

Nice flamebait post, though. Personally, I wouldn't have the guts to trade my dignity for some pageviews. ;)

bedava film izle said...

Meticulously pedantic.